New Delhi: Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Friday that the telecom department’s report on net neutrality is not the final view of the government and a “structured” decision will be taken only after looking into views of all stakeholders. There has been criticism from a section that the net neutrality report of the telecom department is favouring the telecom operators.
“The net neutrality report has come and I want to make this clear that it is not the report of the government. It is the report of the department of telecom,” said Mr Prasad. He said that it is the report of a committee of officers which he had constituted to study the entire gamut of net neutrality. Mr Prasad said that the report is now in public domain for comments and it will be sent to Trai also.
“After the Trai report, we will take a structured view. Thereafter the Cabinet will take a final decision,” Mr Prasad said. The DoT’s committee on net neutrality in its report had said that domestic calls offered by Over-The-Top (OTT) players (Skype, Whatsapp and Viber among others) and telecom operators should be similarly regulated. This many fear will mean end of free domestic calls using Whatsapp and other similar apps.
The panel has also recommended that Trai look at controversial zero rating plans on case to case basis.“Net neutrality is extremely important to allow new players to disrupt old technologies and create efficient products for the future. I think it is important for large corporations to embrace this change and adapt their products to benefit from changing consumer behaviour rather than use tactics such as ‘Zero rating’ to create unfair advantage and hamper innovation,” said Indian Gifts Portal.com CEO Rahul Garg.
